Lewis’s vintage rock is still cause for cheering. Too bad the movie that contains these Killer sounds never rises above a whimper.

It’s a disaster movie in more ways than one. Should you indeed look up, you may be surprised to find one A-list bomb of a movie, all inchoate rage and flailing limbs, falling right on top of you.

Henson looks ready to come out firing on all cylinders, but the comic cowardice of What Men Want leaves her shooting blanks.

Bridges has a fine time playing with himself, so to speak. Add Garrett Hedlund as Flynn's son Sam, the rebel who zaps himself into the server to find his lost dad, and director Joseph Kosinski has a recipe for adventure that should delight gamers. Non-techies are on their own.

Offers action in the Arnold Schwarzenegger style. Well, not right away.

But the film exerts a hold. The crux is: for how long?

One gut-busting death after another, terror giving way to tedium. Your call.

The Fifth Estate is stuck running in place.

The laughs that do achieve liftoff are killer. But the real kick is seeing the old gang back and ready to party.

Cut out the extra layers of nothingness piling up in the margins and you’ve got the kind of surreal tension that only romantic comedies, that dying but not dead genre, can offer: a case being made for romantic love, even when it doesn’t exist.

The Gray Man wants to remind you of what an old-school dopamine dump these types of entertainments are, and it has what seems to be the necessary ingredients to do it. Which, to be honest, only makes you wish this was tighter, tauter, tougher, better. It could be. It should be. The movie’s aims and instincts are killer. Its endgame has way too much filler.

Pine is driven and touchingly vulnerable. And Banks, heartbreakingly good, nails every nuance in a raw wound of a role. Thanks to their teamwork, we believe we are watching people like us.

This wet dream for action junkies leaves out logic and motivation --you know, all the boring stuff.

Another January dud. Broken City drops hot-shot actors in a quicksand of clichés and watches them sink.

Doesn't deliver an ounce of charm.

Bale even cedes the juiciest part to Aussie newcomer Sam Worthington, who is star material as a machine with a conscience. T4 is a mixed bag, but it's not f***ing amateur.

The rousing life that Malek brings to this extraordinary recreation deserves all the cheers it gets. Screw the film’s flaws — you don’t want to miss his performance.

Here's the movie of the month for those who like their escapism big, brutal and brainless. Two fine young actors – James Marshall (Twin Peaks) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Boyz n the Hood) – have inexplicably agreed to strike suitable-for-leering poses in their underwear while director Rowdy Herrington (Road House) devises other distractions from the idiotic plot.

Bateman doesn't make a false move, and a stellar Charlize Theron springs her own bolts from the blue as Ray's wife. As for Smith, he's on fire. There's nothing like a star shining on his highest beams. You follow him anywhere.

Depending on your reaction to the cinematic outrages perpetrated by Danish director Lars von Trier (remember Dogville?), you might want to add or subtract two stars from the halfway (half-assed?) rating I just gave Antichrist.

The amount of casual charisma and commitment Pitt is bringing to this is the one thing that actually differentiates this from being just another stylishly lit, stupid-hip snarkfest.

What holds us are the actors, including Terrence Howard as a cop who grew up with the brothers.

Russell, to his everlasting credit, has made a film in which having cockeyed optimism, at this moment in the world, somehow feels like a radical act. For a movie that is all over the place, it’s determination to get back to a bygone moment isn’t just wishful thinking. It suggests, in own roundabout way, that a return to the past can also signal the beginning of a fresh start.

The film belongs to Phoenix ("To Die For"), who is terrific. He has the gift, shared with his late brother, River, of conveying emotions without pushing them at you. The delicacy of his scenes with Tyler lets you enjoy the film for what it truly is: a heartbreaker.

Washington strikes the right tone of cocksure bravery as it turns into bewilderment, psychosis, and rage as the movie goes through its many wild twists and turns.

This kinky game of murder and eroticism is preposterous but never boring.

Downhill is sure as hell not the farce it’s been advertised to look like in the trailer. And you’ll search in vain for "Force Majeure’s" grounding in existential crisis. I don’t know what the Swedes would call Downhill. What’s Swedish for an unholy mess?

Director Elie Chouraqui, who co-wrote the script, catches the chaotic horror of war, but why bother if you're going to subjugate truth to the tear-jerking demands of soap opera?

In a summer of clones, Harvard Man is something rare and riveting: a wild ride that relies on more than special effects.

Should have been a fun update on the 1967 Brit farce. Director/co-writer Ramis comes on too strong with the camper trickery.

In the end, Shelley and the audience are cheated of a tale truly told. De Niro, on the brink of giving a landmark performance, settles for being a gross special effect. And the promise Branagh once showed as a filmmaker, like the hope of revitalizing Frankenstein, is dead again.

Boring is the last word you should use for a sports-hero-turned-spy story like this; it's the only one that comes to mind after you've seen the film.

Alternately smarmy and achingly familiar, Little squeezes "Big" for one more run through the Hollywood grinder.

The real burned-out case is director-writer Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show made his reputation, and these aging Texans trying to rediscover their innocence obviously touch him deeply. But Bogdanovich’s style has turned heavy, crude and incoherent.

Hook may keep the action spinning, but the noise you hear isn’t life. It’s the sound of symbols crashing.

Mixing Rock with ooh-la-la turns out to be as appetizing as chalk and cheese.

An alternately kick-ass and clumsy piece of sci-fi claptrap that puts its empty head down and gets the job done.

You might not pay money to see this in a theater, but you’d watch it on your couch in a second, which is why Netflix makes perfect sense for it. A coda sets up a sequel. There are worse things to look forward to.

It's visual magic, and director Barry Sonnenfeld, who followed his MIB high with the lows of "Wild Wild West" and "Big Trouble," revels in it. He doesn't so much direct MIBII as load it with cool stuff and flit around to whatever takes his fancy. As summer escapism goes, you could do worse.

Looks and flows great, dripping with the 1940s crime-thriller atmosphere that James Ellroy described in his 1987 novel. On other levels -- plot (overstuffed), suspense (muted), acting (Hilary Swank as a femme fatale? Please!), posing (Scarlett Johansson plays dress-up as a mini Lana Turner), sex (it's all before and after) -- the movie is a bust.

What the film, based on books by Felt and John D. O'Connor, lacks in narrative drive it strives to make up for with psychological probing.

It's not just that Jennifer Lopez looks lost and out of her league acting with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman. That's to be expected. It's the drag-ass solemnity of this turgid family drama that makes you crazy.

If nothing else, How to Make a Killing is an abject lesson in how to hire the right person to salvage your movie.

The actors do what they can to keep their heads above the sudsy script. No go. It’s distressing to see a great subject go wrong in the right hands.

Irresistibly deranged.

More clever in idea than execution, this mockumentary about a trio of middle-class poseurs masquerading as the World's Most Dangerous Group Not Named N.W.A (Rock even sports Eazy-E's trademark jheri curl) is at its best when it's spoofing the songs of the time — Sweat of My Balls, a hilarious reworking of Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo's Talk Like Sex is Weird Al–level genius.

Carell is the life of the party and the main reason this animated blast of slapstick silliness packs appeal beyond the PG crowd.

Rob Marshall's flawed but frequently dazzling Nine is a hot-blooded musical fantasia full of song, dance, raging emotion and simmering sexuality.

Fleischer isn't much on details. It's all about the zigzagging rush of the ride. Fair trade.

Carnage is for the most part, in ways that count, another dirtbag delight. It’s a lesser movie than Venom, but one that scratches many of the same itches and then some.

Soul Men is a chance to salute these masters of mirth and music. Take it.

"Paranormal Activity" has been here before, of course, but Silent House springs tangy new tricks, and Olsen is a primo scream queen.

Quick and the Dead plays like a crazed compilation of highlights from famous westerns. Raimi finds the right look but misses the heartbeat. You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot.

Director Gregory Hoblit ("Primal Fear") is merely arranging cliches in new patterns until the surprise ending blows enough pro-military fervor up the audience's ass to make Colin Powell call a halt.

Alleged family fun.

Director Michael Hoffman sprays on the tears like a toxic mist. Avoid like the plague.

The result is just good enough to pass as an action flick you watch with the forgiving gaze that comes from too many beers and too little sleep.

As a movie, Gold is slim pickings. But McConaughey keeps you riveted.

You can’t say it’s unambitious, any more than you could call it coherent, and the result is less Dances With Wolves Redux and more Palms on Faces.

There’s enough here for half a dozen movies, and you can feel the severe overcrowding. But you can't keep your eyes off it.

What's onscreen feels squeezed, truncated and curiously embalmed. It's got no kick to it.

Kid'n Play have charm, but it's disturbing to see them settle for the slick. Their rap used to stand for something; now it's just easy listening.

Walken is so funny, he almost makes you forget this flick is one joke stretched thinner than Calista Flockhart.

A cheerless exercise.

If you can't see where this is going, you've probably never seen a movie before. But the script plods on, complete with an ending that futilely tries to tidy up the scenario strands. Miraculously, Aniston maintains our rooting interest.

If nothing else, Damon and Affleck’s Beacon Street Wild Ride reminds you that movie stars plus car crashes, divided by gunshots and laughs, was part of a regular, balanced American-cinema breakfast.

What nearly saves the movie, besides the Rasmussen eye candy, is Paris itself, shot in shimmering black-and-white by the gifted Thierry Arbogast. Talk is cheap here, and often inane, but as a silent film, Angel-A could have been magic.

Run, Fat Boy, Run stays out of sitcom quicksand long enough to make you think that Schwimmer has a knack for this comedy-directing thing.

No more than a beguiling trifle. But in the dog days of summer, it's a perk to wallow in inspired silliness.

Is there an audience for this? Sadly, yes. There’s nothing wrong with a movie that cheers American heroes. But this one does so by reducing everything else to cardboard.

How did talent like this conspire to pump out such bilge? I mean, really.

As a pure dilemma-fest, the movie basically works, resetting the clock scene by scene, making the joy of survival deliberately short-lived. The suspense works. Watching these people figure things out, just in the nick of time — except in the cases of the people who run out of time — doesn’t really get old, even if the movie somehow gets a little old.

As the film stopped counting back in years and switched to months, I panicked that it would slog on to weeks, hours and seconds before reaching its inevitable end. I was wrong. About A Lot Like Love leaving you wanting a lot less, I am right.

Director Gillian Armstrong turns Sebastian Faulks' pungent novel about World War II into a soporific.

Something cold and mechanical has seeped into the sequel. The divas push so hard for fun, it kills the spontaneity that fun needs to breathe.

Distressingly shallow.

At its best, The Predator is a movie that makes you forget there’s an iconic killer alien involved at all — with the exception of a slaughter in a lab and a shoot-out near a spaceship, the high points mostly involve the cast simply cracking wise with each other.

So the sequel, A Game of Shadows, is more of the stupid same. It wouldn't matter so much if Downey and Jude Law, as the bromantic Dr. Watson, didn't look so ready to turn on the cerebral dazzle. Instead, Ritchie treats them like action goons out of his "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" basement.

Look, it’s not like Tron: Ares, the third entry in this film series that now spans four decades, doesn’t have a few things going for it.

Potent if hardly evenhanded documentary.

The movie plays like an evangelical prayer meeting, though I'd hold the hallelujahs. The characters we came to admire as vulnerable misfits hit the stage like visiting royalty and with a nonstop perkiness that makes the Von Trapps look like manic-depressives.

If you're ready to go with the hit-and-miss flow, you'll laugh your ass off.

Spacey's deft directing can't offset a script that wants to be Chinatown and ends up as indigestible chop suey.

Except for Kate Winslet's fearsome turn as a villain, the only terror Divergent roused in me was that the drag-ass thing would never end. Sorry, I'm a Candor.

I'm convinced there is a good movie trying to punch itself out of The Greatest Showman. What a shame that Gracey buried Jackman and company in a pile of marshmallow.

Special kudos to Freeman, who kills it on the dance floor and later while drunk off his ass on vodka and Red Bull. You'll groan as much as howl at the jokes, but the veteran stars have a ball acting their age. Even when all else fails them, they're good company.

A rich blend of humor and heartbreak.

It's a kick to see the adorably sexy Barrymore back in relaxed form again after the "Duplex" debacle and that calamitous "Charlie's Angels" sequel. Right now, she's the closest thing to sunshine you'll find at the movies.

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) can stage action, but he can't save a trivializing, reactionary script featuring a Hollywood star (read America) as a global savior.

Oddly, the published screenplay – while far from McCarthy's top-drawer – reads better than it plays. What's onscreen recalls a line from No Country: "It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"

First-time filmmaker Kate Barker-Froyland trusts the silences that occur when two people aren't talking. That's a good thing. What's not so good is when the talk grows enervating.

If you’re longing for a delicious romantic romp to take your mind off the world going to hell in hand basket, Paris Can Wait is it.

Shot three years ago, this soggy horrorshow gives credence to the belief that January is the month Hollywood uses to bury its mistakes.

Give the girls a cheer, but remember: "Bring It On" is still the poo, Missy. Take a big whiff.

Winds up being faster and funnier than the first time. Chan's acrobatic high jinks play strikingly off of Tucker's wiseass humor.

Would it be asking too much if the hit-and-miss jokes could maybe nudge an inch beyond the obvious?

Rifkin has conjured up a new low in cinematic ineptitude.

The best thing you can say about Escape Room is that for most of it, you’re not desperately searching for the exit sign.